Magic in Ithkar (8 page)

Jezeri felt hot and uncomfortable watching her, but she couldn’t help sneaking quick, embarrassed peeks at her. The dancer was a sleek, powerful creature, a rich dark gold with gold-streaked umber hair, a coarse mane as wild as Nightlord’s tail after a run through thorny brush. Fidgeting from foot to foot, always on the point of leaving, Jezeri stayed until the music stopped and an arrogant young apprentice dancer walked out among the watchers, shaking her tambourine under their noses, demanding rather than requesting payment for their entertainment—and getting it, heaps and handfuls of coin.

Jezeri grinned and drifted on.

Snake dancers. Tanu hissed his disgust, so Jezeri hastened past these, eyes widening at women shaved bald and tattooed all over.

Mouse races—little gray runners scurrying through mazes.

A sly little man with three shells and a pea and a following of adolescent boys, her brothers among them. Jezeri watched a moment, feeling comfortably superior. She had, after all, overcome just such a temptation. She sniffed with disgust as her brother Calley lost a copper bit.

Jugglers.

Puppeteers. She stopped to watch one play but got tired of being elbowed or squeezed near flat. Anyway, what she managed to see embarrassed her more than the dancer had and got worse as the bellows of appreciation from the crowd got louder, men and women alike urging the puppets on. She stared at hot red faces and decided this was some kind of grown-up thing she might appreciate when she was older.

A minstrel strolled by. She sensed his interest, though he said nothing as he walked beside her a moment. He stared at Tanu, but that didn’t bother her after the first prick of fear, since she could feel his puzzlement. Then he quirked a brow at her, bowed quickly, gracefully, and passed on, the only one of them all to see she was a girl in spite of her trousers. His curiosity quickly faded as he moved away, plucking idle chords from his guitar, subvocalizing words as he sought the songs to match the mood of the crowd.

The sense of him trickled off as she left the fringes for the area of stalls and booths where cookshops and sweet vendors turned the air as thick as stew with what they sold, where other vendors sold wine in throwaway clay cups and beer cooled by ice magicked down from the mountains. Jezeri and Tanu drifted along in an ecstasy of sniffing and staring, entranced by the glimmer of mirrors, the shimmering colors of the silks spread out on counters with folk haggling over them, the spices in pots and crocks that perfumed the air every time a customer lifted a lid to test the taste and aroma of what he or she was buying.

A woman with a round sweaty face, her hair tied up in a linen coif, was stirring a glutinous mass in an iron pot, muscles like melons in her heavy arms. She pulled the ladle loose, eyed the brown threads dripping from it. Clucking her tongue with satisfaction, she emptied a cup of white powder into the pot, stirred a moment longer, then stepped back and watched the candy foam up until it filled the inside. She swung the pot off the fire, tilted it over a stone slab, and let the seething mass spread out into a brown puddle. There was another stone slab on the far side of the pot where an earlier batch was already cold. She took a mallet and broke this into pieces.

Jezeri bought a copper’s worth of candy shards, coaxed Tanu from the pocket and set him on her shoulder, gave him a piece of the candy. They both crunched noisily and contentedly on their shards as Jezeri strolled on, immersed in the life around her, ignoring that little itch at the back of her neck.

People stood in clots, talking, arguing, buying, selling, all sorts of dress, all shades of skin—from a translucent white rivaling the moon’s pallor, through shades of gold and brown, to a soft black darker than night.

Their helmets ruddy in torch and lantern light, fair-wards strutted arrogantly through the crowd, forcing others to step aside for them.

Priests were all over the place, like vermin infesting a granary, no two of them alike, from the one who wore an elaborate robe of black velvet thickly embroidered with gold and crimson thread to a dust-and-ash-plastered ascetic whose single garment had less cloth than a lady’s kerchief. They chanted, whirled in off dances, jingled begging bowls, or stood about looking wise if they could, settling for mystery if wisdom seemed unlikely.

The itch got worse.

Jezeri licked her fingers and rubbed them dry on her trousers, spat on Tanu’s hands, and used the hem of her tunic to wipe them clean. “No sticky fingers in my hair,” she told him, smiled as he sang his protest. She eased him back into the pocket, rubbed irritably at her neck, calling herself many names, the kindest of which was fool. Despite Old ’Un’s warning she’d let herself be so caught up in the pleasures assaulting her senses that she’d been slow to take serious notice of the itch. She couldn’t ignore it any longer. Someone was watching her. Worse. Someone was following her, had been following her for a long time. She began walking slowly on, letting the noise and excitement flow unnoticed around her.

What to do? She wished her father was here, or her mother. They always had answers, even if you didn’t like them. Hunt up a fair-ward? Bronze helmets enough about, mostly around the drinkshops.

Mama said first hint of trouble, yell, she thought, but ... well, yell what? I’m being followed? And the ward asks who by. And I say I don’t know, it’s just I’ve got this feeling in the back of my neck. And he says get out of here, kid, I got no time for foolishness or he takes me by the ear and trots me back to camp. No! Anna rot him, I won’t let him chase me off. Besides, what can he do to me with all these people about? Hunh!

She moved her shoulders impatiently. Tanu tickled her jaw with his tail-finger. She grinned and pulled it away from her face and let him curl the finger about her thumb. In a funny way her follower gave a touch of spice to her enjoyment of her first fairing night. “He wants to play games,” she told Tanu. “We’ll play, too.”

She began walking slowly, steadily, halted without warning before a stall, darted around it into another line of shops, tried to catch a glimpse of who was following her, but saw nothing. “He’s done this before,” she told Tanu. She strolled casually along, then suddenly squeezed through first one group of chaffering adults, then another; they smiled after her, granting her the first night indulgence her follower certainly wouldn’t receive from them. She felt frustration billowing from him, a frustration reflected in Tanu’s growing uneasiness. He didn’t like this game. He was treading nervously at the bottom of the pocket, the hairs on his tail erected, rubbing stiffly against her neck.

She twisted and turned through the rest of the merchants’ sector, riding a high of excitement and mischief until Tanu’s distress began to rub off on her. The game was going on too long; the man’s persistence began to disturb her. “Enough,” she whispered to Tanu and nodded as he sing-muttered his agreement. She tried to break away from the man, but he was always there behind her. Nothing she did shook him off. She started looking about for a fair-ward and knew a spurt of panic when she saw how quickly the crowd was thinning. There were no wards about, not here. He’s been herding me, she thought. Fool, fool, fool. Breathing hard, she scrambled to a stop as the palings loomed before her. She looked both ways along them, then wriggled through the space between two of the peeled poles and raced through the trees to the Pilgrim Way, which led to the great gate of the temple.

Late as it was, the Way was still crowded. That comforted her and also surprised her. Because she was not a pilgrim, because the folk of Vale were what they were, she had forgotten that the fair was the high point of the pilgrim year. Folk came overland and by sea to pay tribute to the Three Lordly Ones, to atone for sins real or imagined, to beg favor from the gods. To Jezeri all this seemed as much nonsense as the patter of the man with the shells and the peas. Jezeri’s Vale folk paid respect to Aieea the Nurturer and Artna the Hunter; their rites were splendid excuses for feasts and games and general revelry after the hard work of harvest and the gray dullness of winter. There were no priests in the Vale. The folk there—sturdy independent farm folk and stock raisers—thought themselves quite able to manage their relationship with their gods and saw no point in feeding extra mouths. Aunt Jesset would snort with scorn if anyone called her a priestess. She had no authority over the lives of Vale folk and wanted none; all she asked was to tend Aieea’s shrine, grow her herbs, use her healing gifts when needed, and to be left alone to live her life the way she wanted.

Jezeri plunged into the throng, wove through pilgrims until she thought she’d lost herself; the itch had died away almost completely. She slipped into an opening behind a clot of pilgrims from overseas and began gazing about with curiosity and a regrettable smugness.

She saw a few high ladies with long silk dresses trimmed with fur, jeweled headdresses, and gauzy veils that obscured very little of what they covered. But most pilgrims wore coarse somber robes with only a worn bit of rope as a girdle. Many of them had an exhausted, emaciated look, as if they’d walked barefoot across half the world to get here. Some were simply slogging forward, saving the dregs of their energy to get them to their goal; others had a glowing exaltation and were chanting, the various chants so mixed Jezeri couldn’t make out the words. She rubbed absently at the back of her neck, stiffened as she realized what she was doing.

Her shadow was back. Calm now. Unhurried. Sure of her. She could feel him so strongly it was like a club whammed against her head. Mama, oh, Mama, why didn’t I do what you told me? She shook herself calmer and and began to wriggle between clumps of pilgrims, trying to put more space between her and her shadow, looking anxiously about for a fair-ward. All back haunting the drinkshops, she thought bitterly. Tanu had gone silent, scrunched low in the pocket, his small black hands gripping the cloth of her tunic so tightly she could feel the ache in her own hands. She pushed harder against the bodies blocking her way, ignoring muttered irritation and scolds, brushing off hands that caught at her. If she could get to the temple, if she could just get there ... He wouldn’t dare try anything under the eyes of the priests. . . . Old ’Un warned her against going near them, but he hadn’t known—

A thread of music, soft, tiny, like the singing of the wind. It began weaving in and out of the scattered chanting. A nothing. A bit of wind. But her feet stopped moving. A woman behind her bumped into her, hissed disapproval at her, and waddled around her. She struggled. Her legs were frozen. The music built a wall between her and the priests ahead.

She broke a foot free. She couldn’t go forward, but she could edge herself sideways. She began stumbling across the lines of pilgrims, relieved that she could move. That relief went quickly as she realized she was being herded. Again herded. She opened her mouth to scream, to bring the fair-wards or the priests to her if she couldn’t go to them.

The music added a harsh trill and her throat closed up.

As she knocked into people, flailed her arms, tried to close numb hands on robes, arms, whatever she touched slipping away from her, she saw people drawing away from her, faces shocked, disapproving, dismayed, fearful. They thought she was a twitcher throwing a fit. She understood that after a while, tried to plead for help with her eyes, her groping hands, but they all were deaf to these.

She staggered sideways until she was off the Pilgrim Way and back under the trees of the temple gardens, tearing through bushes, stumbling through wind-whipped shadow.

When the music began forcing her toward the water, her surge of panic wore off and she felt Tanu’s fearful grip on her tunic loosen. The piper was somewhere behind her, but he was as silent as one of those shadows. Though she could hear the squeak of the grass under her boot soles, the creak and rasp of the dirt, she couldn’t hear him at all. He’s a hunter, yes, he has to be, she thought. She won a step closer to the palings, grinned fiercely into the darkness, and began pushing against the lock the music had on her body, working her way closer and closer to the pales. The fair sounds and the flicker of its lights teased at her. She tried a sudden jerk for freedom, but he reeled her back. A darkness ahead. The old warehouse. She tried to ease her head around so she could see him, but her neck muscles were as stiff as frozen ropes. She set herself to wait while she slogged along as slowly as she could. She was no tame prey like some of her female cousins, helpless and scary and as easy to do down as a woolie’s calf. As she touched the wall of the warehouse and moved along it, she blessed Old ’Un for giving her the knife; still, she had to have a plan or the piper would take it away from her and use it on her. She had no illusions about opposing her strength to his. A knife. A plan. And Tanu.

Her mother said: She takes that beast to bed with her, she even talks to it. What is it, Miles? Is it dangerous?

Her father said: Looks like a cross between a coon and a cat. Dangerous? Even-tempered little beast. Don’t bite even when she pulls its tail. Besides, you’d have trouble getting him away from her, and what’s the need? Let them be. He’s teaching her what responsibility means, teaching her to finish what she starts.

Jezeri said: What is Tanu? Old ’Un said nothing.

The crippled direwolf they were tracking from its latest kill cornered Jezeri between a cliff with an unstable slant of scree at its base and a river plunging through rock-filled rapids. Tanu wriggled away from her, ran up the scree, and launched himself at the wolf, his overlarge hind legs sending him arcing over the intervening distance onto the back of the beast. He drove heelspurs Jezeri didn’t know he had into the wolf’s sides, leaped away. The direwolf fell dead. And Tanu came singing contentedly to her, the poison spurs retracted into their sheaths, his soft, small hands patting her to comfort her.

They buried the direwolf and tacitly agreed not to tell her parents how it died.

Jezeri said: What is Tanu? You’ve got to tell me now.

Old ’Un said: Better you don’t know. Safer. He’ll never hurt you, that’s all you need to know.